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Tie-dyes!

Sunday, June 7, 2009

My inner-hippy has been banging to get out more and more these days.  Ratdog and The Dead concerts.  An ever growing collection of audience recorded live Jam Band Concerts.  And tie-dyes.  If I’m not working, I’m probably wearing one.

Unfortunately, the damn things cost a fortune.  $35, $40 even $50 a piece.  There was only one logical conclusion:

Make my own!

When I was a kid, and again in college, i’d made tie-dyes with RIT dye, but they didn’t look as good the ones I could buy.  And they faded after just a few washes.

I did some homework, figured out how some of the more eye-popping designs we achieved and learned what dyes to use.

We made two each; one spiral and one ‘V’ pattern.

The results speak for themselves.

td01td02
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I think I’m going about this all wrong…

Thursday, March 5, 2009

It occurs to me that problem is me.

I look around and no one else seems to be bothered.  It stands to reason that the problem is me.

Maybe I try too hard.  Maybe my goals are unrealistic.  Maybe my perception of myself is not in line with reality.

I shouldn’t be working this hard.  I should put in these hours.  I already know that, due to budget constraints, there will be no raise this year.  Again.  Couple that with the fact that I can’t even get recognized for my efforts.  Not even a fucking atta boy.

Getting a new job? Well that’s not working either.

I think I need new goals.

Perhaps I should just work “johnny punchclock” hours and smoke a lot of pot.  Potheads seem generally relaxed.  Sure it would prevent me from getting a new job in all likelihood, but the current job has no drug testing policies.  Hell, I should probably come to work high.  That would have to make things go smoother.

I wouldn’t be as productive… but who cares. It’s not like its going to cost me a raise or something.  I mean what exactly am I doing all this for?  Because it’s the right thing to do?  I’m not sure that it really is.

Maybe that plan has some flaws, but something has to give.  If I keep going like this… I’m not going to be worth anything to anyone.


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The dumbest day of the year

Sunday, February 1, 2009

I spent my Birthday at work for 12 hours. Yeah, I know how to party.

I doesn’t really matter. I hate my Birthday. It’s not the getting older, I don’t mind that. I’ve spent most of life wishing that I was old enough to be able to do this or that.

It’s just something about the day and the way people react (or don’t react) to it. For years, I’ve felt slighted on my birthday. It’s stupid, but to me your birthday should be a time to celebrate you. I used to make a point of making sure that I did something special for my friends on their birthday; take them out, throw a party or something.

My friends never felt the need to do that for me. And it’s not like they didn’t do it for other people. There is just something about my winning personality that makes people not want to do that I guess.

After a while, I got tired of being disappointed about this. I just don’t acknowledge my birthday anymore. (As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure that this is the first time I’ve mentioned it on this blog.)

I worked for 12 hours with a half dozen co-workers and not one of them knew. Not that they don’t publish monthly birthdays. They do.

I don’t really want to feel sorry for myself, but that’s exactly how I feel. It probably has more to do with the long hours I’ve put in the last two weeks and the sinus infection that I’ve been doing my best to ignore.

I just don’t understand why no one (and I mean no one) doesn’t feel like, “It’s Jeckles’ Birthday, we should do something really special.”

Of course, after years of this, it’s become a Thing for me. I’m so ready for it to be a huge disappointment, that I don’t know that anybody could do it right.

If it was just my Birthday, that wouldn’t be so bad. But the birthday thing is just the big shining example of how people seem to react to me in general.

I’ve been told (and told again and again) that intimidate people or do something or another to keep them at distance. I don’t doubt that this is true, but it isn’t something I’m trying to do. And it is really frustrating.

None of this matters, and once I’ve gotten a good night’s sleep or two I won’t be bothered about it. At least not for another year.


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First Post of the Year

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Today is the 25th of January and I’m just now getting around to the first post of the year. I suck.

It’s January. Winter. I hate it. Short Gray days. Cold that doesn’t let up. And maybe it’s all in my head, but it seems colder than usual this year. It’s like a stain that spreads through everything else.

Everything I do, seems to be bleached out by this. It makes me so fucking tired.

This happens every year, and by the end of January it seems unbearable. I know from 30 some odd year of experience that as February comes and goes that the days will get longer, the cold spells will get shorter and further apart. And that things will start look better.

I know this, but it seems a lifetime away.

In the meantime, I have a project looming. I feel like I haven’t done anything but work in weeks. Between the cold and dark; and the work that I do that seems to be completely unappreciated… it’s almost too much bear.

I’m a problem solver.  It’s what I do for a living and it is the approach I take to life.  But when I feel like this, I don’t know how to solve it.  And that makes me feel helpless.

So that’s me at the end of January.  Cold, over-worked and helpless.

I guess I’ll read a comic book and then I’ve got some work to do before Monday.


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Another one bites the dust…

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Another year is gone.  Blah Blah Blah.

I find it hard to get into all of this New Year stuff.  It appears to be some bizarre combination of nostalgia and optimism for the future.

Nothing has change significantly since last week.  A New Year, perhaps, but mostly just another day.

But I guess I can’t avoid it it completely.  2008 sucked.  There were a few good points, Obama got elected and the Ravens re-invented themselves with John Harbaugh and Joe Flacco.  But those things don’t really affect my day to day life.

Work has been and continues to be hellish for me.  The economy sucks and as much as I avoid all of the fatalism I see other express about it, I feel it.

I need a change.  A big one.  I know this, and I know generally what I want to do.

But if there is one thing I suck at… it’s the job hunt.  I’m a person that has a lot to say, but when it is time to compose a cover letter or worse yet speak to a prospective employer.  I freeze. I can’t get the thoughts out of my head and make them part of the conversation.  When I do manage to write a woefully lacking excuse of an email, I walk way feeling like I’ve been punched.

None of this matters, I guess, I just know that I need to do something, anything.  I can’t keep going on like this.  It’s killing me.  Little by little. But killing me all the same.

I hate sounding so negative.  And maybe I should be like everyone else and think of 2009 as a blank slate on which I can make a fresh start.  But it doesn’t feel like that to me.  It feels like just another day.

Tomorrow I go back to work.  Not that I haven’t worked plenty over the so-called break. I can’t express the loathing and apprehension that I feel knowing that whatever I do or say will be disregarded or ignored by my so called peers.  And that my boss will likely be too tied up in whatever it is that demands her attention to give a shit about what I do.

Blah.

I’m tired just thinking about it.


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Bad Karma, perhaps?

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

I didn’t notice it at first.  It’s subtle and you miss it.  A bit of bad luck, a tough break here or there.

A Virus, then another.
Smart phone breaking.
Xbox 360 gets the infamous Red Ring of Death.

After a while it sinks in.  I’ve the got the tech whammy.  Shit is breaking left and right.  This is beyond bad luck.  The straw that broken the camel’s back: my televison.

My 65 inches of High Def joy.  My monstrous rear projection CRT.  My $3000 plus indulgence for the love of football and movies.  My television was broken.  It is over four years old, but for that much money it is going to have to last longer than that.

It wouldn’t turn on.  The Power Button just sat there and blinked green.  I unplugged it, waited a minute and then plugged it back in, this had worked in the past.  Blinking Green Light.  I hit the System Reset Button.  Blinking Green Light.   I tried various  combination of powering it off, unplugging it, hold down buttons and reseting it.  The result was always the same.  Blinking Green Light.

I called Mitsubishi.  The TV is out of warranty.  Beyond the old unplug trick and the old reset trick there was nothing they could do.  The service center for the place I bough it from is what I needed, says Mitsubishi.  Any clue what the problem could be, asks I.  Impossible to say.

I call the store I  bought from.  The service center is closed.  He’ll fax my ticket in and they’ll call me in the morning.  Any idea what the problem is?  Blinking green light?  No idea.

I do a google search.  Blinking Green Light of Death they call it.  Happens, apparently, to a lot of these Mitsubishi Wide Screen CRT projections.  Problem is almost always a bad DM bourd, what ever that is, and seems to cost anywhere from $300-800 to repair.

This. Can’t. Be. Happening.

I dig deeper, the problem with the DM boards seems to be bad capacitors, 4 of them on the board.  As I read I find stories of a few people who had swapped the caps themselves and were able to resolve the problem.

I can do this, I told myself.  One of the DIYers said he step by step instructions as well as teh Mitsubishi Troubleshooting guide.  I email him asking for any info he would be willing to share and then I went to bed.

The next I didn’t hear back from the DIYer or from teh service center.

I said, fuck it, and took a screw driver to the TV and started to open it up.  As I was taking the back off, I got an email with the step by step instructions.  I used them to find the DM board and remove it from the TV.  A quick eximanition confirms that the 4 caps are indeed blown.

It takes trips to 3 different Radio Shacks to get the 4 capacitors that I need.  Capt Shutter comes to offer and a hand ( and to see if I electrocute myself.) It takes a while with my shaky hand but get eht old caps desoldered and then solder the new ones on.

Snap the board back and fire the TV up and to my wonder it comes back to life.

I never did hear from the service center.  And I think that I need to call Mitsubishi back and tell them that for three grand, they can put in caps that will hold up.  I will not purchase anything from Mitsushi again.  Nor will I purchase anyting from  the Big Screen store again.

But it works and that is great.  It amazes me that the problem was that small… and that I was able to adress it.  But I’m pissed that the company would have a design flaw like that and not do thier best to support customers that run into that issue.

And I’ve got shake this tech whammy.


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Geek Lament

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

I’m an idiot.  I really am.

Okay, I’m smart enough, but when I ignore common sense that doesn’t help much.

My PC got a virus.  A pretty nasty one.  It took me a while a while, but I got it all cleaned up.  2 days later, I go out to some hacker site and BAM! I get hit with one mother of a virus.

I know better.  But I can fix this shit.  It’s part of what I do for a living.  So I get arrogant.  I decided that the advice that I give to other people, doesn’t apply to me.  And it was bound to happen one of these days… I found a virus smarter than me.  I couldn’t fix it.  Format.  Reload.

I know that a lot of geeks format/reload on a regular basis, but I don’t.  I’d only done once on this PC  (which is going on 5 years old.)  I like to use my computer, not fiddle with it.  So I reasoned if I had to blow it up… I might as well really change some things around.  I installed Ubuntu 8.10.

I am very familiar with Ubuntu, I’ve played around with a fair bit, but I’d never taken the leap to put it on my main PC.  There are a few things just won’t work on it.  An app or two, and the drivers to my mixer that I user for the stupid radio show.  No problem.  I have a PC sitting around here that I can dedicate to those things.  SO I install XP on that one and set it up as my dedicated Podcast PC.

So after spending most of my free time for the last few weeks fixing or setting up my PCs, things are finally the way I want them.

Then the earpiece went out on my phone.  Sprint was kind enough to replace the phone, but now it will take a bit off work to get it customised to how I had the old one.

I can’t win.


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I voted for Barack Obama and I’m proud of it!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

This morning  I voted for Barack Obama.  And I think that he can win.  I certainly hope he does.

I probably would have voted for who ever the Democratic candidate was, but I doubt I would have been this excited about it.  At the beginning of this cycle I didn’t think that Obama could possibly win.  I liked some of the things he said, but I didn’t believe that he was a realistic candidate.

Man was I was wrong.  This guy is smart, energetic and seems to sincerely want to make things better.  I like him cause he says, “Here’s what we’re gonna do…” and then he tells me what he wants to do.  That shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is.  Most politicians speak in sound bites, and when it comes time to explain their plan, it sounds like gibberish.

Do I think that Obama can do all things he says he wants to?  Hell,  I don’t know.  I’m tempted to say that some of these things are a bit naive and that you can’t just make these changes in today’s Washington.  But I’m not going to say that.  I’m done under-estimating this guy.

I thought, initially, that he had screwed up when he chose Biden as his running mate.  Everyone knew how gaffe-prone he was.  But what was supposed to be his great weakness is what makes him a credible partner in this campaign.  Joe Biden speaks his mind and his heart.  Occasionally, that creates a gaffe, but I don’t hear in him this political mumbo jumbo.  I hear someone who believes in this campaign.  Completely.

The Obama people have talked about running a “50 State Campaign” from the very beginning.  Again, when I first heard that, I thought that it was a nice idea, but you can’t do that.  You have to focus on the states you can win and pour your resources in to those states.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I have no doubt that the strategy of campaigning to the whole country, is the very reason that Obama is poised to win a few traditionally Red states.  More than that, it’s a much better way to view the election and the country.  McCain and Palin have been campaigning to what they perceive to be the Real America, pitting those so-called Real Americans against the rest of the country.  And alienating the rest of us in the process.  If you want to be President of all 50 states, how could you do anything but run a 50 State Campaign.

Like I said, I’m done doubting Barack Obama.  I’m a believer.  I think that his vision will improve this country.

I’m proud to say that I voted for Barack Obama and I encourage anyone who hasn’t voted yet to consider doing the same.  You won’t regret it.


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Walking to Jersey, Part One

Saturday, October 25, 2008
Pennsylvania Rocks

Pennsylvania Rocks

When I talk about backpacking, I try to convey that the getting there is as important as the destination.  Hell, the destination is often no more than some little road in the middle of nowhere or a mostly flat spot to pitch a tent.  There is nowhere in particular that we are going to, just the next stretch trail.

This trip was different.  5 years ago when I went on my first serious backpacking trip, we were dropped off (in the pouring rain) in Maryland, we walked for about 4 miles before crossing into Pennsylvania.  Since then, I’ve walked all of the trail in Maryland, plus the seven miles that go through West Virginia.  I’ve walked over 300 miles in Virginia.  Most of that 300 plus miles has come on week long trips.  In contrast, before this trip started I had walked just over 200 miles in Pennsylvania, all of it done over weekend trips.

That has been my backpacking experience; week long ventures in the beautiful and majestic mountains of Virginia and weekend trips along the rocky ridges of eastern Pennsylvania.

I hate hiking the trail in Pennsylvania.  The trail is littered with ankle bending and toe kicking rocks, which occasional give way to boulders.

These thoughts are on my mind as we drive the three hours to Delaware Water Gap.  My friend is kind of enough to drive up with us.  We park my truck just across the Delaware River in New Jersey and Captain Shutter, WAN-Man and I pile into her minivan to head to the trailhead.

Fall Trail

Fall Trail

We drive to the tiny Village of Delps and make our way to a parking lot for State Game Land access.  It’s just about 2 o’clock on Friday afternoon.  We thankour friend for driving and head up a blue blazed trail.  We climb about 700 feet in a little over a half mile where we intersect with the Appalachian Trail.  It’s the same spot where I had sat and waited for my dad, but he never came.  I tell myself that this trip will end better than that one.  We grab a snack and then hit the trail.  We don’t walk long before the trail turns rocky.

We make good time, covering the rocky 6 miles to Leroy Smith shelter in about 3 hours.

I am out of water, all of the the water sources that we had passed were dry.  The spring right next to the shelter is also dry.  We have to follow the blue blaze most of a mile to get to a running spring.  Captain Shutter and I sit by the little spring pumping water through a filter into our water bottles.  I drink one liter bottle and refill it before we walk back to camp.  Efficiency with water is important.  It would do me no good to fill the bottles up and then feel thirsty enough to want to drink one once we made it back to camp.  After the bottles are watered up and I am “cameled up” we head back up the trail to the shelter.  WAN-Man is there waiting there and another hiker has come in while we were at the spring.  He is a SOBO thru-hiker.  Meaning that he started his hike at the Northern Terminus of the AT, Mount Khatadin in Maine, and intends to walk all the way to Springer Mountain in Georgia, the Southern Terminus.  We chat with him for a little bit but he is staying in the shelter and we plan to tent, so we move our gear to the area designated for tenting a few hundred yards away.

Friday's Camp

Friday's Camp

We set up our tents as the sun went down. Once our tents were up and our gear stowed, we sat around the fire ring to make our respective dinners.  We don’t build a campfire.  We rarely do, backpacking is all about efficiency.  I boil water for Ramen Noodles on my small gas stove.  The warm soup feels good as the temperature drops.

There isn’t a cloud in the sky and through the thinning foliage of the tall trees the stars shine above us.  It’s beautiful, but we know that with no cloud cover, the temperature will plummet.  We put on additional layers to keep warm.  I boil some more water, to help clean out my pot, but also to use for tea.  Backpacking is about efficiency.  We hang our food from a tree to keep it away from any critters.  We sit around the fire ring, with no fire, in the dark and talk.  Eventually, the cold drives us to our tents we retire for the night.

I brought my lightweight sleepbag, so i change into my fleece pants and micro-fleece pullover before climbing into the bag and liner.  I pull the mummy bag tight around my head, so that the only part of me that is exposed is my nose and mouth.

I drift of to sleep knowing that New Jersey is about 20 miles away and by the end of the weekend I will be able to honestly say that I have walked every step of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, a milestone that I have been work towards for five years.  In spite of the cold and the howling wind outside, I drift off to sleep content.


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Sore and tired…

Sunday, October 19, 2008

I have returned from my backpacking trip.  I’m tired and sore, but overall it was a good trip.  And I have now walked every step of the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania.  That’s about 230 miles.  In all, I’ve walked just about 600 contiguous miles on the trail from the PA-NJ line on the north side to Southern Virgina (near Roanoke) on the south.  I will try to find it in me to write about this last trip in detail, later this week.

The Ravens won today, getting back to 500.  I didn’t get to see the game due to my trip, but I did watch it (with much fast forwarding) on DVR.

Tomorrow I will have to work a full week.  I haven’t done that in a while, I’m not sure I can stand it.  Wish me luck.


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